Always
by trufflemores
Summary: 4.01. "You came back to me." "Always." Barry's POV during, and after, his return to Earth. With a touch of the supernatural.


Standing before the silent arbiter of the Cosmos in the vast black ether of the Speed Force, Barry announces, "I know what they're trying to do."

The Black Flash holds the captured red star in Its hand, long, spider fingers curled around the core of Barry's being.

"They want me to leave," he explains, nodding at the star. "They gave me a key."

You Can Never Leave, the Black Flash tells him, tossing the red star carelessly aside. We Are The Beginning And The End. There Is No Place To Run.

The monster walks towards him. Barry sinks to a knee and does not panic when a hand of knives rests on his shoulder. Cloaked in the Black Flash's guise, the older version of himself – the unrecognizable version of himself – asks in a deep tone, Do You Wish To Go?

Looking up at those white eyes, Barry has to avert his own gaze. "I'm here to serve."

The hand on his shoulder tightens, rupturing blood vessels. He flinches. The Black Flash's voice does not change. Do You Wish To Go?

Barry's teeth sink into his lower lip. "… Yes." The Black Flash releases him, and he inhales sharply before exhaling blue star dust.

Walking away, the Black Flash says nothing. Barry rises shakily, and asks, "Where are you going?"

The Black Flash pauses, keeping Its back to him. To The End, It says. The hairs on the back of Barry's neck stand.

"What does that mean?"

The monster turns to him. Its glowing white eyes dim, and hazel green shines from that all too human face. It Means What You Think. Then, eyes flashing white, It speaks with his own voice, weathered by eons of silence: "No One Lives Forever. Not Even You." Then Its eyes glow before it turns and vanishes across in a blazing streak of white light, disappearing into that eternal night.

Barry waits for It to return, but nothing changes. _Nothing_ changes.

Panic like fire burns under the soles of his heels. Anxiously, he follows the dying trail of light towards Its maker, but the Black Flash is gone, and no matter how fast he goes he can never find It again.

Before he comes close, the light vanishes, and he finds himself floundering in the dark. With desperate persistence, he retraces his steps towards that small red ember of starlight. _Hurry, hurry, hurry_ , shouts the silence at his heels, silence like terror, like death, like eternity threatening to consume him.

Reaching out, he clasps the star in both hands. A sick, heavy feeling sinks into him, mortality pressing down on all sides, crushing his bones and soul. Gasping, he lets the star go, but it's too late: the damage is done. Breath quickening, he feels his heart pound in his chest, resuscitating him, like-it-or-not. Trying to compensate for the stillness surrounding him. He tries to breathe normally, to respond to it all, but it's strange after all this time, hard to hold a rhythm, to exist.

Stars crowd his vision, dying-despite-his-best-efforts, and he doesn't need to turn to see the shadow of the Black Flash draped over him, its disappointment palpable. Run, It commands, as he hunches over, clutching his chest. Run, If You Want It Back. A hand hovers on his shoulder and the voice of Death growls, Or We Will Take It From You.

There's no in-between, no second chance: choice made, he must follow through. He cries out as he straightens because it feels like a knife twisting through his ribs, but he forces himself to take a single step forward, _I want it, I still want it_ , and then he crashes into a wall of light-sound-noise and sharp-cold-fast until—

Freeze. Breathe. Th-thumpth-thump-th-th-thump _thump_.

Tachycardiac, blind and disoriented, he blinks Speed Force eyes and stars at a world inverted, black with splashes of color – clusters of stars and weight on all sides, resistance, and it'sjustairit'sjustair doesn't help because it's heavy and it's drowning him.

He stands and sways in front of the firm unyielding beast, three blue stars inside the heaving car, and he knows in some small corner of his mind that they're people but he can't make his eyes see them as such and if he can't are they really, _are they really?_ His feet don't want to support him, his feet don't want to keep him up and he crashes to the ground and sees stars, stars, stars, above him, on all sides, muffling sound, making the rest of the world almost quiet.

The stars are loud and don't let him speak, don't let him say anything so he tries but all he remembers are words from Before, words from Before and words from After and words they haven't heard yet and why-don't-they-know-the-Speed-Force? He tries to explain that he can't hear them can't see them but they don't listen, they pin him down and _those guys kept picking on that kid just because he wasn't cool it wasn't right I wasn't fast enough._

He hunches as small as he can and still he isn't small enough, painfully exposed, _I wasn't fast enough I wasn't fast enough I wasn't fast enough_ and he remembers now he remembers those points of light violent dangerous awful things happening a building collapses thirty-seven people but only fourteen come out and he's desperately digging through the rubble for those flickering, dying stars even with a bar impaled through his ribs and he cries out and presses a hand to his ribs but there is no bar, there is no bar.

They take him somewhere he can't see, saying things he can't understand, and he tries to walk but he can't even stand. He doesn't know how to stand anymore and he needs to—he _needs_ to hurry the water's gonna come the water's gonna come and everyone's gonna die and _I didn't want you to find out this way._

He doesn't know what he says aloud and what he keeps inside, but it doesn't matter because there is no boundary between the real and the unreal. It's all a dream, a strange and terrible dream, and he wants to go home he wants to go back he aches for the silence amid the noise-noise-noise as his lungs begin to shred and his hands fracture and his every dying breath becomes loud in his ears, screaming against the noise, the noise, the shaking apart of his very being.

Then there's a sharp pinch on his shoulder and he sinks down, breathing shallow but no less scared because God he can't breathe, he _can't breathe_ , and he's clawing for any surface to hold onto but nothing stays for long.

He's too weak to stand. Something strong lifts him, and carries him a short distance, and sets him down on the smooth cold surface. He struggles away from the smooth cold surface and struggles into a corner until he is boxed in on either side, closing his eyes as tightly as he can and clutching his head in both hands, pleading under his breath, _It's just a dream it's just a dream it's just a dream._

Then a red star settles in front of him and puts a hand on his shoulder. It says something to him, he knows it does because he remembers people talking to him a long time ago, but he cannot understand the words now, he can't _hear_ the words, his ears listen for a frequency above human, nothing is tuned into it, but something far away _is_ , and it itches, it's loud, he scratches at his ears and then claws at them as the pitch increases, howling in pain because oh, God, make it stop, it's so loud, it's so loud—

He has to try, he has to try to say something, to make it stop but then there's another sharp pinch in his shoulder and he shies away and ends up hard on his side, the world is sideways, and a faint laugh slips past him because the whole world is sideways.

They leave him alone, and he stays like that for a time, away of the points of light around him but unable to make any of them resolve into familiar shapes, all of it is Speed Force noise and Speed Force fear, fear of the unknown, the chaotic, the impulsive, uncontrollable, the atomic shifts that happen at a speed he can see but can't process because.

And then the process rewinds, and he sees the red star before him again, and with strange compulsive candor he reaches out to it and says, "I can't see." But it doesn't make the right sound – no, it sounds like _arbor tree,_ and he repeats, "I can't see" but hears only, from a great distance, _lighthouse sea._

He tries again, faster, faster, cutting out the intermediaries because they trip him up, and there's a sort of rhythm to it, even, that he likes, that makes the rest of the noise seem purposeful, stars-stars-stars-like-scars, and scars-scars-scars-like-stars. He rubs the middle of his back because there's a star-like-a-scar not-there and if it's a scar-like-a-star and invisible in the light can it be real? If-they-can't-see-it-is-it-still-real? There's another star-like-scar over his heart-heart-like-stop-start, and he remembers the kick to his chest like a train, like a train, as lightning coursed through him like a train, phasing train, don't you love the sound of rain?

But the words aren't fast enough, and the words hurt his ears, and something nearby is pressed into his hand and for a moment he expects a sharp pinch but it just sits in his palm and he stares at it until he can see the outline of a marker.

He thinks, write-write-stand-still-or-fight and presses the pen to the wall and it _dances_ , in his hand it moves like an extension of himself, painting the blank staring walls in patterns, telling the whispering walls stories, stories Before and After. His fingers move in strange neurotic patterns, circles, triangles, squares, refusing to twist in the arthritic configurations of words he remembers should remember _why can't I remember_ but he was gone a long time and the Black Flash never needed words.

He draws a circle and thinks _this is me_.

Relieved, he throws on another circle with a line through it, a scar-like-a-star, and then another and another and another until he forgets what each individual scar-like star means, cataloguing a feeling, a thing he cannot say, knowing they will look at his sea of wordless memories and see _nothing_. He sketches out those soft flat stars with their remembered scars because he's losing track of them all, hand shaking at times, obscuring the sketch.

Soon there aren't just his scars, but the stars of other people: those people he pulled from the fire who still burned, those people who died as he slept, those people who bled out in his arms. He jabs the marker against the wall hard enough it bleeds, and he likes that, the way it bleeds, but he doesn't like inflicting pain on it, I'm-not-like-you.

He cradles it to his chest and apologizes silently, tears streaming down his face, _I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry_.

They try to take the pen away and he sobs, insisting over and over, "Stars-stars-stars," because it's all he can say, and then there's a fresh new shiny pen in hand and only a memory of the first.

Then time reverses, doubling back with dizzying abruptness, and he's still holding the broken pen but it's not broken anymore, a desperate sort of urgency overtaking him as he draws. With a trembling hand, he dares to press more stars on the wall, the wall which seems tangible only when he presses the pen to it, and there's an emotion clawing in his chest for release that won't come out because he doesn't remember its name.

Eventually, he's bled himself dry on the wall, found a darkness in the quiet catharsis, and sits cross-legged before it, heart beating, heart beating. Inhale deep, exhale slow.

 _Everything is going to be okay._

He closes his eyes and smiles, smiles because he remembers how to, and he can't erase it, the sensation of being real a terrible chain, and a profound relief.

 _I'm the master of my fate._

But the universe around him won't stand still, and he doesn't know how to read it, so he huddles in his little corner and protects his collection of stars because together they're _beautiful_.

"Love, love, love," he murmurs, but it sounds like, "red, red, red." Because red is the color he's looking for, the clawing emotion in his chest as red spills over his lip and he collapses and hands slide under his head and he tries to say 'love' but all he tastes is red, red, red, and he knows he's dying and wants to say something and falls asleep before he can find it.

Startling awake, heart racing, he carefully pushes the pen against the wall, trying to push the memories as far as he can, but he can almost feel the Black Flash breathing over his shoulder, ready to take him away. _It means what I think it means_ , he recalls, and then he draws a single jagged triangle.

 _Endpoint._

It's in the center, and he draws outward, he draws anywhere but inward, radiating from that point. But no matter how far he goes he's pulled back, until he's staring at the wall again, at the endpoint, a blazing red star overlapping, his Speed Force eyes revealing what human eyes cannot.

 _It's already here_ , he thinks, and he reaches out, pressing a hand against the triangle. _It's already here._

Others arrive. They say his name, but his mind won't stay with them, projecting ahead to when the room is lonely, and dark, and his eyes can't make out the stars. Slinking back to the safety of the past, when he was alone, and almost at peace. He tries to convey to them peace, smiling because it doesn't hurt, it's the only thing that doesn't hurt, and then he speaks and he can't stop talking.

He thinks _I was someone_ and tries to convey who that someone was. He tries to tell them as much as himself, but it doesn't work, it doesn't come together right, and frustration pins him down, brings him to a crouch on the floor, and now the emotions are bleeding out unchecked, untamed, _raining, draining, paining._

At some indeterminate point there is another sharp pinch in his shoulder.

He sinks down, down, down, and doesn't try to come up again.

It's all a bit blurry, where they have him, where they have him, because he knows this place but it's inverted, it's in the wrong colors, why can he see _so much_ and still process none of it, no facial expressions, no words, no understanding of the great failing connection between him and that unknowable Other, a panicking creature that sweeps in when he fails and _Flash_.

He knows what sets it off, knows it because he's okay, he's okay, warmth building in his chest as he projects outward, remembering things, being hugged by his parents – and they're okay – and holding his babies (his _babies_ ) – and they're okay – and everything in the world slowing down, letting him see it, everything-at-once – but there's a sharp sort of pain closing in a sharp sort of familiar pain a breathtaking pain and his parents are dead and his babies are gone and he can't do anything for either of them and then the pain knifes through his heart, a pulse so close he can feel it like his, _this is on you_ , and he can't stand it so he dives as deep as he can and runs.

He comes up for air in an empty blank suffocating claustrophobic space and hyperventilates his way to a new marker and scribbles enough symbols on the walls that they begin to look beautiful, again, his breath slowing down slowing down, _it's okay_ , like a mantra in his head but he's tired, cold in his bones and teeth and chest and they don't understand when he explains it because he doesn't know how to explain the tired black fuzzy pain.

But there's a star near him, speaking to him in a voice he should know, and he looks at the star with exhausted eyes and wonders if he can't still go home, _take me home, take me home_ , before a grounding hand settles on his shoulder.

He reaches up to hold onto it, feeling warmth and firmness under long, spider fingers, a human heartbeat nearby, a human timbre talking to him, words he can't hear, he's too low, he's too slow, but they're there for him, and he settles back against the wall and dreams it's okay. The human moves and he lets their arm go because _I've got you son_.

Smiling to himself, he feels something sharp and smooth, sharp and smooth pressed gently to his face but he doesn't run away because it doesn't hurt even though there's a strange whispering sensation with each stroke. But he knows this because it's imprinted in his soul, _taught me how to drive and shave,_ and he smiles because he's safe, he's safe, he's safe.

He doesn't know where he is and he doesn't know if he'll ever understand what to _do_ because there's so much here there's _so much_ here and even the Speed Force trembles in this mystifying space, this vast chaotic unreadable place, unhelpful not from superiority but _fear_. It doesn't know what to do here; it doesn't know what it can possibly do in this world it was not born in, in this world that is utterly, completely, totally apart from it.

Troubled – _you're on your own here_ – Barry sinks into his little stupor and lets the kindness drift away from him, waiting for another sharp pinch, but it doesn't come. If anything, it bothers him more, the inconsistency of the thing, and he draws to take his mind off it, saying anything he think might matter, trying to weave a cohesive story from everything before him. He tells himself stories and smudges the details because the details don't matter they're temporal, they're in _flux_ they'll be different tomorrow and he laughs at the thought of a tomorrow because what is _tomorrow_.

He thinks of tomorrow and the future and _I don't know, maybe we can make that a thing every once in awhile?_ Because there's a soft, quiet, aching in the loneliness of all those unreadable stars, and he wants, he wants, he _wants_ to join them, to be with them, to be accepted and not put in this lonely blank space where all he can do is write with a shaking sporadic hand, _It'd be pretty bitchin'._

He draws It, the memory of a family, of _home_ , with a circle and a handful of straight lines around it that a computer he doesn't know will read as _the house_ , and maybe he would smile if he knew the computer misunderstood him perfectly. He omits the word "would," omits it because there is no emotion for it, no symbol in his expression, and they won't ever read it so they don't need to know how much he wants _family_.

In the end, all he draws are his little circle and a scribble of laughter, of _The Speed Force wants us to be bros,_ and he presses the marker hard to the wall and tries not to cry because he doesn't know how to tell them what he wants.

( _The house is bitchin'._ Swallowed by a machine and bleached with the stark meaning assigned to each immediate symbol, it doesn't tell the whole story, misunderstands the point. Misleads them into thinking he's not there. He's not there.)

 _I'm right here_ , he thinks, and begins to right it over and over and over, _I'm here, I'm here, I'm here_ , and his circles morph, because _here_ is many places, when he is strong and tall and a line leans against him because he can carry the weight; here is when he is weak and hurting and another circle hovers nearby, waiting-to-see, waiting-to-see if he'll make it; here is when he is happy and the circle stays open-ended, a crude smile; here is when he is devastated and lines cut and bleed across the patterns; here is right now, in this tiny unknowable world with nothing to hold onto but the pen in his hand and a desperation to be heard, to _know_ , to give the Speed Force what it wants.

 _I want this. I want this._

And then a voice speaks and he doesn't hear the words, but he hears _words_ , distinct, one-two-three, and he freezes in place for a long moment, astounded, because _I heard that._ He turns to say as much but he's already alone, and he tries to rewind the tape but nothing happens, he's trapped in the present, and _say it again_ , he entreats, but no one is there.

He tries to puzzle it out, one-two-three, but there's another voice, anxious and loud, hard to hear, words coming in and out of focus because Barry can hear, he can _hear_ but slow-down-slow-down, and then two words leap off the page for him:

 _Iris, die._

And he remembers, with soul-wrenching immediacy, standing in front of the monster in the blue mask as he drew his sword. He remembers the breathless fear the aching rage and helpless fury of no second chances _do or die_ and then he ran because he had to because he had to because _I have to try._

A quiet voice in his soul offers a single command: _Run, Barry._

 _Run._

He takes off and the wall that withstood every force before it shatters like ice against him, yielding with breathtaking fluidity before him. He runs because he doesn't know this world, he can't ever truly know this world, but he _can_ be a force in it, he can master himself, he can _make it listen_ , and he runs faster than the world ever thought he could because he won't let fear or rage or panic stop him.

He runs and it brings his world into focus: suddenly the pounding of his heart makes sense as he slows down his breath, every muscle working in tandem, the Speed Force's sole ambition propelling him forward as lightning carves clear paths through the frozen space. He runs and sees the monster up ahead holding Iris, and he knows this time he is fast enough, and a wild sort of freedom launches him into the air.

And it is here in this place of perfect stillness that the noise vanishes, leaving only the immediate, the powerfully immediate, his body a powerful animal complying instantaneously with his commands, that he finds the balance of two impossibly different worlds.

For an instant he feels like that monster, that silent arbiter of the Cosmos, an ageless, timeless being taking back what it came for, _I'm here to help_ written in the discordant words _Let me be there at the end._

He lets that world drop away, that timeless ever-space, and lands easily in the grass with Iris in his arms.

He breathes slowly and sets her down carefully, because the confidence gained in that Other realm scarcely seems to transfer here, but he was born here, this is _his_ home, and there is a part of him that will always remember it.

And she gasps, "Barry" and he looks at her, _my world_ , and she finishes in breathless wonder, "you came back to me."

His Speed heart slows, his Speed eyes focus, and the Speed Force seems to step aside, trusting him, _lead the way_ , as he smiles and says the only thing that he knows is true: " _Always_."

She kisses him, and even with the stars, and the noise, and every memory in between them, he finds himself focusing utterly on her, tuning out the rest, quietly refusing to let it daunt him.

 _Knowing how it ends doesn't make it less worth living_ , he thinks. _Knowing it will end doesn't negate what happens until then – or after_.

And he sees, faintly, a life after him – a city that still thrives and still loves him, long after he's gone. A mission seen through, with a legacy carried out. A new role claiming him for a time, a long time, until at last even the Black Flash can close Its eyes and rest.

All of that – and all that ever came before, the great expanses effortlessly before him – awaits.

Kissing Iris deeply, he dares to believe that he'll love every second until then, and find love in the after.

 _This is the rest of our lives_ , he thinks, and knows the Black Flash watches him somewhere, sometime, with pride, an ancient Speed Barry on Earth who learned the lesson long ago.

 _I can't be just me anymore. This is who I am – who we are._

But he doesn't have to surrender himself – doesn't have to sacrifice what he loves as he gazes with wonder and fear and determination into an abyss no one else can see.

 _Kadima_ , he thinks, breaking apart and resting his forehead against Iris'. _Forward._

Aloud, he says very, very carefully, "I love you."

And he hears it in his own voice, even as Speed Force courses through his veins, and doesn't stop smiling even when tears streak down his face.

. o .

Somewhere in that great and terrible elsewhere, the Black Flash unmasks, and Barry Allen exhales.

Exhausted, but satisfied, he sits on a rock at the end of the world. The souls he has carried – countless souls he has ferried – from the Cosmos to the Great Beyond stretch beyond comprehension. He has been busy, comforting those he could not save, soothing those who suffered despite his best attempts to protect them in life. He has stood at the side of the last breaths of so many and granted them peace.

Barely able to breathe, so great is his fatigue, he tells the Speed Force, "It's your turn." Pressing a hand to the deep, unhealed wound across his jaw, he commands softly, "It's your turn."

He closes his eyes and relaxes when he feels his heart beat slowing, his breath deepening. When he opens them, a tall black shadow – The Ghost – hovers before him. He smiles at it, and says, "I'll miss you." Then he shuts his eyes again and bows his head, and The Ghost carries him away.

When he opens his eyes again, he's lying on the grass in foot of his childhood home. Standing, he walks up to the front door, each step soothing against his tired soles, his tired soul. He taps on the door and from within a melodic voice invites him to join her. Heart beating softly, footsteps so gentle, he lets himself inside and asks, "Mom?"

A newspaper folds in half and his dad smiles from the couch, hair peppered with grey and reading glasses in place, smile affectionate and familiar. "Hey, slugger."

Barry is too tired to even stumble over to him, but his dad rises and meets him halfway, cradling him in a firm hug. "You did good," he says, hand at the back of Barry's neck, squeezing gently. "You did so good."

His mom joins them and tears trickle down his face as he lets go of his dad and approaches her. "Hi," she says, reaching up to brush his tears away with her hands, and he closes his eyes, but she does not vanish. "Hi, sweetheart. Come sit down. Come rest."

The Speed Force cannot know, cannot possibly understand the surge of pure love he feels as he hugs her, the reason he weeps when his dad joins in. It cannot know, because love is not an emotion granted to the ether.

He cannot translate what the Speed Force sees of his world into words his family will understand. (When they asked about it, he always lied, and smiled, and said he didn't remember, because how could he tell them that he was still that same person, he was always going to be that person?) He cannot describe why he followed it to the literal ends of the Earth, the very end of time, knowing fully well that he would find no rest between. But when he was weak and tired it comforted him; and when he was strong and joyful it rejoiced with him. And somewhere within all of it, the complex, inexpressible, indescribable pain, and grief, and joy, they built a bond together that could only be thought of as _love_.

Maybe, he thinks, settling on a couch between his beloved parents, his head on his mother's shoulders, his hand holding onto his father's, it never needed to understand him to love him.

Closing his eyes, he exhales, and basks in the after – the life beyond his own, the life beyond the Speed Force, the life that is, once again, once-and-always, his.

And he knows peace.


End file.
